A na Jordán dopadla tma

Jan Váňa's debut surprises with its maturity and sincerity, following the tradition of poets with a guitar wrapped in fragile sadness and tender melancholy.

Autumn in headphones. Jan Váňa releases a debut album entitled "A na Jordán dopadla tma" (i.e. And Darkness Fell On Jordan). The Tábor (CZ) native recorded an acoustic album full of poetic and melancholic songs under the production supervision of the electronic magician badfocus. The eight-song recording may be shorter in scope, but it is filled to the brim with emotion and authenticity.

Jan Váňa is freely inspired and at the same time follows the old poets with a guitar. "Playing alone with a guitar and putting emphasis on the lyrics is very natural for me, I can't imagine it any other way. And I'm really proud of the songwriting tradition here, so I like to refer to it." The fact that the lyrics are the essential ingredient of the whole song is clear from the first notes of the album. "The lyrics are probably more important to me than the music, I try to make them stand up even as poems on paper as much as possible. I enjoy trying different ways to approach the verses - for example, ‘En passant’ is quite poetic, there are metaphors and I play with it a bit, whereas ‘Doma prej letos napad sníh’ (i.e.It Snowed At Home This Year, They Say) is very civil, almost as if I was telling it to someone over coffee and it happened to have rhythm and rhymes."

In collaboration with badfocus, he had previously recorded two singles, and in preparation for the debut album, several songs were collected that even had band arrangements. "Some of the songs that were shortlisted before recording didn't make it to the final set," Jan Váňa admits.  "And I'm glad they didn't, I feel like this way the record is more complete and somehow more mine. It just fits me better. You can probably see that at my concerts - my ideal audience sits on the floor, listens and sings."

The album’s creation began in 2022, and a great deal of credit for the final acoustic form goes to the producer badfocus (Prokop Korb), with whom Jan Váňa collaborated in the selection of the tracks before recording. "We took a lot of time and thought and talked a lot about what, how and why it should happen. As a result, everything you hear on the record is recorded on a microphone - no synths, no digital instruments, everything is a bit old-fashioned. And the great production was done by Prokop, who is a master of electronic stuff, and the beautiful mix and master was done by Láďa Štěrba. The whole process of searching and creating was beautiful. It just clicked somehow. We recorded the atmospheres and noises that appear on the record in places that are connected to those songs, like the birds in the botanical garden in Tábor (for the song ‘V zahradě’ - i.e. In The Garden) or the rain from the place where I wrote ‘Mrholí’ (i.e. It’s Drizzling) a year before recording in the same rain."

References to the native land run not only through the whole record, but one is right in the album title. As Jan Váňa confirms, Jordan is not necessarily the famous river here, but it refers to his native region: "I've been living in Prague for a few years now, but my thoughts are still often in the south. And in Tábor we have the Jordan reservoir, which I used to go to in high school to write poems; that place has such a special charm, it always had a strong effect on me. The whole album is permeated with a kind of searching, uprootedness and homesickness, which is why I found this verse so apt for the title of the album."